Film

Margarita is a charming film and is the latest feature from lesbian co-directors Laurie Colbert and Dominique Cardona who brought us the 2007 drama Finn’s Girl.

Winner of the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus (1959) brings the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the twentieth-century madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. 

This sumptuous English-language ‘50s piece recounts the mid-life years of Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop (play by Mirando Otto, Lord of the Rings), when she left America to live and write in Rio de Janiero. In Brazil Bishop would also fall in love with well-off architect Lota de Macedo Soares. Initial hostilities between the pair make way for a complicated yet long-lasting love affair that dramatically alters Bishop’s relationship to the world around her.

Kawa is a gorgeously cinematic drama from New Zealand that tells a transcendent tale of bravery, love, family and pride. Based on the semi-autobiographical novel Nights in the Gardens of Spain by Witi Ihimaera. 

Keep Quiet is a feature length documentary film chronicling the struggle of journalists and pro-democracy advocates in their fight against the constitutional change and in favor of democracy in the Republic of Congo. 

Finlandia explores the lives of a group of muxes—the third gender of the Zapotec indigenous community—as they navigate transphobia, globalization, and love in southern Mexico. Awarded Best Feature Film at the OUTshine Film Festival as well as the Audience Award at the Festival de films LGBTQI+ de Toulouse.
Run time: 120 minutes
Language: Spanish

Sid’s mother has one wish: for Sid to get married and have some kids. Sid’s not opposed to the idea, but to get there…Sid has to introduce their boyfriend to the family and come out as a transgender woman. Oh, and by the way, a fourteen-year-old boy pops up claiming to be Sid’s son. Join us for this heartwarming film that explores what it means to be a family.

Jonathan spends his days caring for his father, Burghardt, who is terminally ill. Burghardt’s outlook is bleak until an old friend, Ron, shows up, and Jonathan learns that his father and Ron were perhaps more than just friends. Can Jonathan come to terms with his father’s sexuality? Will newly revealed truths bring a father and son together or tear them apart? Released in 2017, Jonathan is a beautifully shot German film that was awarded the Audience Award (Best Gay Film) at the Pittsburgh LGBT Film Festival as well as the Jury Prize (First Feature) at the San Francisco LGBT International Film Festival.

One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a turbulent cycle of infatuation and destructive jealousy as they break up, make up, and fall apart again and again.

Reel Stories is a free monthly film series dedicated to showcasing international queer cinema presented in partnership with Reel Q, Pittsburgh's LGBTQ+ Film Festival. February’s screening presents Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, a 2013 romantic comedy directed by Arvin Chen.

In this moving program presented in partnership with Pittsburgh Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (PINJ), City of Asylum hosts a screening of the new work in progress Working Films & Appalshop documentary film, Calls from Home. An intimate portrait of rural prison expansion, Calls From Home documents WMMT-FM’s longstanding radio show that sends messages over the public airwaves to reach those incarcerated in Central Appalachia.

Reel Stories is a free monthly film series dedicated to showcasing international queer cinema presented in partnership with Reel Q, Pittsburgh’s LGBTQ+ Film Festival. March’s screening presents "Sweetheart," the 2021 dramedy directed by Marley Morrison.